Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 2007. My cast away this week this week is Paul McKenna to describe him as Britain's

best-known hypnotist would be, but not the full picture true.

He made his name on prime time TV with millions watching incredulously as he mesmerized

ordinary people into doing extraordinary things. but it's in his role as a modern day

guru that he's gained significant credibility and a fortune to match.

As Britain's best-selling non-fiction author, his paperbacks fly off the shelves, and it's little wonder,

with titles like I can make you thin, quit smoking today and change your life in seven days.

He taps into the angstered and preoccupations of our age with promises of in seven as a boy he was chronically unconfident and terrorised by bullies and in his career

he has twice stood in the witness box accused of causing a man's schizophrenia and to defend himself

against possessing a fake PhD. He won on both occasions. We're

going to come back to those tribulations later Paul McKenna because they are

fascinating but can we start with the very basics? How does it feel to be

hypnotized? Well for for everybody, it's different, but usually it's deep relaxation.

People find that instead of being aware of lots of things,

we tend to focus on one idea at a time.

You could probably compare it to meditation or, you know, in business,

people do a thing called strategic planning where, you know, they relax and then imagine what their company will be doing

you know what product or service they'll be offering in the future and what their

competitors will be doing that seems to me to be just the same as hypnosis all

the great creatives throughout history, Einstein, Mozart, Tesla, Goeter,

...